The Art Of Noise: The Seduction Of Claude Debussy

THE ART OF NOISE: THE SEDUCTION OF CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1999)

1) Il Pleure (At The Turn Of The Century); 2) Born On A Sunday; 3) Dreaming In Colour; 4) On Being Blue; 5) Con­tinued In Colour; 6) Rapt: In The Evening Air; 7) Metaforce; 8) The Holy Egoism Of Genius; 9) La Flute De Pan; 10) Metaphor On The Floor; 11) Approximate Mood Swing No. 2; 12) Pause; 13) Out Of This World (Version 138).

Perhaps The Rape Of Claude Debussy would be a more fitting title. The Art Of Noise disban­ded soon after the critical failure of Below The Waste, either seeing their noisartistic mission as complete or realizing that there was no more mission to speak of in the first place. Then, a decade later, nostalgia kicked in — and some sort of arrogant realization, on the part of several of the founding fathers, that the history of The Art Of Noise would never be enshrined if the ideas that they set out with around 1984 were not brought back to life, one more time, at the turn of the mil­lennium. For that one occasion, at least, The Art Of Noise had to be resurrected — and, if chance would have it, come up with something brilliant.

So Trevor Horn, Paul Morley, and Anne Dudley held hands once again, although Jeczalik and Langan stayed out of the picture (either they were wise enough not to tempt fate, or, perhaps, Horn and Morley never invited them in the first place, putting all the blame for the original cor­ruption of the Art of Noise aesthetics on these guys); instead, Lol Creme of 10CC/Godley & Cre­me fame was brought in full-time to work on the project.

The project's ambitious backbone was to concentrate on the life and art of Debussy, in a highly (and obviously) symbolic manner — Debussy's major art works were also created at the turn of the century, and Debussy's major art purpose was also to shock and revolutionize. Here, then, is a tribute album from pop music's biggest bunch of (self-proclaimed) hooligans to one of classical music's greatest hooligans. And just so that it all don't seem way too primitive, The Seduction must not simply sound as straightforward Debussy sampling set to Art Of Noise's usual rhythmic patterns. It must incorporate everything — from Debussy's piano work to opera to jazz to pop to techno to hip-hop, a celebration of the man's twisted legacy. Yes, there is a curve from Debussy all the way to Rakim, even if takes The Art Of Noise to prove it.

I cannot firmly state that such a concept was, or always will be, doomed to fail; as you understand, the statistical sampling is way low on this. I cannot say, either, if Claude Debussy, wherever he is at the moment, was indeed seduced by the album, or whether he loathed it (as I did when I first listened to it) or simply remained indifferent (as I am now). Quite a few people were seduced, and some not only consider its purpose fulfilled to a tee, but even think of it as the band's grandest and most unforgettable statement. But I would rather join a different school of thought here — I think the purpose of the record may be admirable, yet the way it is realized does little, if any, jus­tice to all parties, including Debussy, The Art Of Noise, and the target audience.

Debussy was, of course, a fearless modernizer, but he was also an idealist, and his impressionistic music was written for the heart of the listener, much like the impressionistic paintings of the era, however strange they might have looked to the conservative eye, were painted for the heart. In that, he succeeded admirably — no matter how different his bitonality and pentatonic experi­ments sound, even for the untrained ear, from the great composers of the XIXth century, today his output is still alarmingly «normal». But The Art Of Noise, at their best, had always preached the postmodern, sneeringly hip attitude, creating sounds that, even now, more than twenty years after their heyday, still sound sneeringly hip, blowing your mind, perhaps, but not your heart. If there is a special telephone line from Debussy to The Art Of Noise, different from the general network that connects all forms of music, I fail to see it, and The Seduction does not help me much. Other than occasional sampled sprinklings from Debussy's work, scattered here and there, The Seduc­tion bears little resemblance to the man's spirit, and pays even less respect to his legacy.

As a typical «Art Of Noise» album, it does not make a great mark, either. There is none of the band's usual sense of humour; steeped in modernistic pretentious reverence, it demands to be ta­ken seriously every step of the way — unless one finds humor in letting Rakim rap on a couple of tracks, or in track titles like 'Metaphor On The Floor' (at least you can always count on these guys to come up with a non-trivial pun). The seriousness is also punctuated by constantly annoying voi­ce­overs from John Hurt, reminding us of the enormous cultural status of Debussy — no shit, Sherlock. The band justified it by dubbing Seduction «the soundtrack to a non-existent movie about Debussy»; we can only thank them for not extending their vision that far.

The grooves, way too often, run for way too long without ha­ving too much to say — and most of them are so inobtrusive (say, a combination of soft percus­sion rolls, deep-buried repetitive piano riffs, and «heavenly» synth-orchestration) that you'd have to qualify them as «ambient» music; but since when have The Art Of Noise, one of the rudest, most hyperactive electronica-based projects of the XXth century, been reclassified as soft, inob­trusive ambient sounds to soothe the soul? And how does that tie in with the bombastic concept?

I cannot even label this as a «grandiose failure», because there is nothing grandiose about it, ex­cept for the original idea, given one of the lamest realizations in the history of grandiose original ideas. If you want Debussy, listen to Debussy; Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune kicks Trevor Horn's ass all the way to high heaven. If you want The Art Of Noise, listen to Who's Afraid?..., or 'Yebo!', at least. If you want a good mixture of both, get yourself a good piece of music soft­ware and revel all you want in your own freaky perversions. If you want to tell me something along the lines of: «Forget about Debussy, forget about the Art Of Noise, just close your eyes and enjoy the musical rapture», well, I tried — but every time I did, a faint whiff of either Debussy or the former Art Of Noise came along, telling me to drop all this shit and go listen to the real thing. In the end, I just had to give up. Thumbs down. Who knows, maybe some day someone will get it right.

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The Art Of Noise: Below The Waste

ART OF NOISE: BELOW THE WASTE (1989)

1) Dan Dare; 2) Yebo!; 3) Catwalk; 4) Promenade 1; 5) Dilemma; 6) Island; 7) Chang Gang; 8) Promenade 2; 9) Back To Back; 10) Flashback; 11) Spit; 12) Robinson Crusoe; 13) James Bond Theme; 14) Finale.

Paul Morley never had much respect for Art Of Noise and their work since he left the project in 1985. Obviously, he had a certain right to be pissed; and when his former colleagues scored their biggest commercial hit (a cover of Prince's 'Kiss') in the form of a collaboration with Tom Jones, he had himself a golden pretext to dismiss them in interviews as sellouts and novelty goons. Then out came Below The Waste, an album that showed maybe about a third of the inventiveness and maybe about a thirty-third of the humor of their glory days, and then The Art Of Noise was shot down, burned, and buried by popular and critical opinion alike. Leading them into disbanding the following year, disgruntled and confused.

The ultimate irony of it all, of course, is that it was exactly the Morley/Horne years when the pro­ject was a true «novelty» act. Throughout all of the four years that they spent free of their artistic gurus' domination, Dudley and Jeczalik had been trying to find the ideal middle ground between crazy cutting-floor wizardry and common appeal; ultimately, they did not succeed, and ended up with curses from hardcore fans and relative indifference from the general public. But they tried all the way, and Below The Waste, be it or not their weakest original-period album, by no means shows any slackening of the spirits.

It is different, and arguably the most «accessible» of all their albums, in the sense that there is al­most no «sonic hooliganry» going on anywhere. The individual tracks are melodic, semi-live, se­mi-electronic compositions, sometimes atmospheric, sometimes rocking out, and they go real ea­sy on sampling, copying, and pasting. 'Yebo!' lasts all of seven minutes, and all of them essential­ly on the same groove — a thing unheard of in the early days. Play it all at mid-level volume and even the most generically-oriented of your buddies may remain unstimulated to ask the sacred question of «what the fuck is that shit». No question about it: the original ideology of the band has been shelved. Art Of Noise? More like Art Of Nice, if you ask me.

All that remains is take Below The Waste on its terms and see if it helps. I have always believed that it actually does. There is moody filler, of course, but there are also compositions that have a life of their own. For one thing, this is the only spot in their career where they were trying to acti­vely toy with «world music», incorporating various ethnic elements into the usual electronic fra­mework. This is especially characteristic of the first two tracks. 'Dan Dare' has much less to do with The Pilot Of The Future than it has to do with an odd mix of African tribal chants, North In­dian war cries, Andean panflutes, and quite European classical strings arrangements (I may be ex­aggerating the diversity a bit, but that the tune is chockfull of syncretism is inarguable).

'Yebo!' is even better, and, I dare say, one of the ultimate classics of the entire «world music» craze. With vocals provided by Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, a world-famous Zulu band ('Yebo!' means 'yes' in Zulu, in case you wanted to know), it somehow manages to respect and send up the trend at the same time — they set up a captivating dance groove, load it with a catchy Bantu vocal melody, then loop it all up in ridiculous proportions. The most seductive thing about it is that there is none of that in-your-face kowtowing before the sacred age-deep wisdom of the Tribal Elders that makes so much of «world music» from the likes of Paul Simon or Sting such an in­tolerable bore, none of that fake reverence that prevents you from sucking in musical influences with the best of all goals — to have fun. 'Yebo!' is fun, from head to toe.

African and other tribal elements pop up on 'Dilemma', 'Chang Gang', and 'Spit' as well, but the assault is not as focused on these tracks as on 'Yebo!'; besides, they are heavily interspersed with pure, and somewhat fillerish, mood pieces ('Island', 'Robinson Crusoe'). The band also came un­der heavy fire for including their interpretation of the James Bond theme — five minutes of elec­tronic surf-rock that, for many listeners, seemed to have become an unpleasant overload of all things Bond-related. (It might not have been such a total coincidence that the year's Bond movie, License To Kill, is recognized as one of the least financially successful in the franchise; perhaps the same people who hated Timothy Dalton took this hatred one step further?). I would say that 'The James Bond Theme' is, indeed, the most «novelty»-like track on the album, but I still like all the weird things they did with it — for instance, how they begin with a very faithful rendition, then proceed to completely deconstruct the thing in the middle, and then make it interbreed with ele­ments of free jazz for a change.

Overall, Below The Waste is like totally that particular type of record that is going to be actively hated by 20% of the people, actively ignored by 78% of the people, and liked by about 2% that happen to include this here reviewer — a «compromising» album in a world mostly populated by people that don't give a shit about the complex art of compromising. 'Yebo!' alone is enough to guarantee it a heartfelt thumbs up, and then they're raised further up through reasonable analysis that states it a federal crime to condemn albums so cleverly conceived and executed.

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The Art Of Noise: In No Sense? Nonsense!

ART OF NOISE: IN NO SENSE? NONSENSE! (1987)

1) Galleons Of Stone; 2) Dragnet; 3) Fin Du Temps; 4) How Rapid?; 5) Opus For Four; 6) Debut; 7) E.F.L.; 8) A Day At The Races; 9) Ode To Don Jose; 10) Counterpoint; 11) Roundabout 727; 12) Ransom On The Sand; 13) Rol­ler 1; 14) Nothing Was Going To Stop Them, Anyway; 15) Crusoe; 16) One Earth.

On their third album, Art Of Noise decided to hit it off the deep edge. Now reduced to the core duo of Dudley and Jeczalik, no chains prevented them of making the psycho-electronic equiva­lent to Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick: a sprawling, not-obviously-coherent mess of tunes, ef­fects, and ideas whose main point is «never let the listener understand where he is going to find himself the next moment».

My version of this album is not actually divided into sixteen tracks; just like the original CD versions of Thick As A Brick, it only contains two, and I have never given myself the trouble of trying to understand which sections of these two correspond to the sixteen «songs» listed on some of the editions — and I am pretty sure that the dynamic duo themselves never intended for any­ of their fans to waste time on that trouble. No single track on the album truly stands on its own; it all works as a single-breath fourty-minute Art Experience.

As usual, the saving grace, particularly for those who are not amused at the idea of art for art's sake, is «fun». Certain chunks don't go anywhere and are really quite boring (particularly the ones that go for that old «brea­thy moody» style of 'Moments In Love'), but every once in a while they bring out the brawny dance rhythms, inject them with samples of whatever they heard on TV the previous day, then interrupt and replace them with crap stuff any time they feel like it — then, as you start cursing under your breath, bring them back... for a while. In short, they cling on to their reputation as the arrogant hoodlums of sampling, and that counts.

The only single piece of it that stuck with audiences was, unsurprisingly, the band's rearrange­ment of the classic theme from the old TV show Dragnet (to serve as a modernized version for the 1987 movie), maybe out of sheer amazement that no significant pop artists since Ray Antho­ny in 1953 had ever wanted to ingrain it into the public conscience as much as, say, the Batman theme. The rearrangement is as fine as the theme itself (and pokes some concealed fun at the show's trappings by looping the spoken line 'I carry a badge' many times over), but sort of obscu­res the fact that much of the rest of the album also consists of music, and not only that, but music originally written by the band members themselves.

A thing, in itself, controversial: the album that presented Art Of Noise in their least compromi­sing, most seriously inaccessible emploi, at the same time betrayed their original purpose — to serve as spiritual guides to machine-crafted art — like no other. There's guitar solos a-plenty on the record, violins playing classical interludes, lounge jazz pieces coolly swung on electric pianos: they're almost becoming a real band. Sure it all goes away then, replaced by crowd recordings or wobbly white noise, to remind us that we are still in 1987, but then wham, you get a fresh saxo­phone solo passage or something. Want it or not, the human still shows through the machine.

Overall, it is the kind of album that really makes me wish Anne Dudley were born ten years earlier and had herself a little stand next to Yoko Ono's at the Indica Gallery, because In No Sense — in all senses — is that particular musical statement that 'Revolution No. 9' could have been, but never was. Of course, one big difference is that Art Of Noise, at their best, were inten­ded to be fun: laughing-smiling, celebrating life's absurdities or, at least, mocking them rather than being terrified at their sight. But then that's exactly what the Beatles' spirit was, too, isn't it, before life made them all bitter and grim? I don't know about everybody else, but this is just the way I like my modern art: self-ironic, easy-going, butterfly-style. You may hate this album, but you will almost certainly snicker at it at least once or twice, and that's enough by me. Thumbs up for all the good feelings.

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The Art Of Noise: In Visible Silence

ART OF NOISE: IN VISIBLE SILENCE (1986)

1) Opus 4; 2) Paranoimia; 3) Eye Of A Needle; 4) Legs/Slip Of The Tongue; 5) Backbeat; 6) Instruments Of Dark­ness; 7) Peter Gunn; 8) Camilla: The Old, Old Story; 9) The Chameleon's Dish/Backbeat; 10*) Peter Gunn (extended version).

Since The Art Of Noise could be easily described as electronic punks, it would have made sense if they ceased to exist as a team upon the release of their first album — which, like all true punks, they would never ever manage to beat in terms of freshness, impact, and overall fun. Instead, they tried to show the world that the hooliganish impulse that was Who's Afraid? could be transfor­med into a regular mode of living.

Which is why In Visible Silence, their stylishly titled follow-up, would, by all acounts, be destined to be far more boring. We know the formula now: randomly selected samples, used partly to set up a rhythmic groove, partly to pepper it with oink-oinks to keep the listener intrigued. And how difficult is it to select a random sample? Not difficult at all if you've spent some time in the electronic business. Much more difficult to convince people that this particular collocation of different samples bears that particular symbolic meaning that makes it «art» (of noise or whatever else).

However, In Visible Silence still places the right bet on the right factor: diversity. Where the first album combined elements of the randomizer with those of the contemporary dance floor, the fol­low-up delves into many more types of traditional musical territory, and so, if the shock value has decreased, the basic inventiveness has not. Of the three singles to herald the album, only 'Legs' sounded like an outtake from Who's Afraid? 'Paranoimia', on the other hand, rode an odd stuttery funky bass-dependent groove (the track was specially written for the AI TV character Max Headroom, still somewhat fun to watch even today), and 'Peter Gunn' — well, 'Peter Gunn' is always 'Peter Gunn'; the band even got Duane Eddy in person (probably caught in a tight cash-strapped situation) to guest on the track, reawakening public interest in his old version from 1960 and also making this one of the oddest collaborations of the decade.

In addition, 'Eye Of A Needle' is built upon the foundations of generic lounge jazz / elevator mu­zak, and 'Backbeat' features uplifting classically-oriented sections with synthesizer patterns that al­most seem lifted from The Who's Quadrophenia. Taken together, these five tracks are an impressive collective illustration of the power of tape-tampering, and prove that The Art Of Noise did have something left to prove after having broken the ground two years earlier.

Some other tracks clearly do not work so well. 'Camilla', for instance, is a rather obvious «re-write» of 'Moments In Love', going for the same type of hushed lushness, but it fails to produce a hook that would be nearly as memorable. And 'Instruments Of Darkness' relies too much on voice­overs — today, its value is nearly all historical (e. g., most of the spoken bits come from the mouth of P. W. Botha, stimulating the curious listener into doing research on the recent history of South Africa) and pretty much non-existing otherwise. But with wildly experimental albums like these, particularly from the early days of the sampling craze, inconsistency is to be expected and made mental peace with before one even puts on the record.

The way the initial punch of Who's Afraid? flows so seamlessly into the wider ambitions of Si­lence is somewhat astonishing, considering the band's fluctuations at the time: the three core members (Anne Dudley, J. J. Jeczalik, Gary Langan) had just torn themselves away from creative gurus Trevor Horn and Paul Morley, amd, consequently, away from Horn's ZTT label and away from the «faceless» artistic ideology that required them all wearing masks during promotion. Live activity was increased, too, with a whole show filmed for video at the Hammersmith Odeon — as weird as it is to see the band reproduce parts of their loops and samples in real time, they did this quite convincingly. Eventually, it would be this very tendency to restore a «live» feeling to their music that finally killed the project — nothing surprising about that — but in 1986, it all worked fine, and twenty-plus years after the fact, In Visible Silence still sounds bawdy and fresh, teach­ing us new ways to enjoy common sounds. Thumbs up.